Kentucky’s defensive adjustments stymie Gonzaga in second half of 90-89 OT loss

SEATTLE – Gonzaga had won 175 consecutive games when leading by 10 points or more at halftime and didn’t appear to be in jeopardy of letting that streak slip on Saturday with a commanding 50-34 first-half advantage against fourth-ranked Kentucky at Climate Pledge Arena.

The seventh-ranked Zags expanded their 16-point lead to 18 points when Michael Ajayi converted an offensive putback on the opening possession of the second half. Nolan Hickman and Khalif Battle converted on consecutive trips down the floor to keep the advantage at 17 points.

Then Kentucky’s defensive adjustments started kicking in.

The Wildcats switched from a man-to-man to zone look, Gonzaga’s shots stopped falling and Kentucky climbed back into the game, turning an 18-point deficit into a two-possession game roughly 8 minutes later.

“Well, it’s easy to make that decision when you’re getting cooked,” Kentucky coach Mark Pope said after his team’s 90-89 overtime win. “So, sometimes, this is really true, sometimes you’re sitting in the huddle and like, “Why not try it?’ Because right now what we’re doing is not working and we’re really blessed to have veteran guys to where we can change it up a lot.

“We tried some blitzing, we tried some morphing zone. It’s a little bit of a zone we run, it morphs the screen man and it can be kind of confusing and you can’t do that with a younger team.”

Gonzaga missed seven consecutive shots during its roughest offensive stretch of the second half. By the time Ben Gregg converted on a short jumper in the lane, the Bulldogs’ lead was down to 56-52 and Kentucky had all the momentum.

“They were doing a fake zone where they were two passes or whatever,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. “They’d stay in it for two passes, we kind of do that every once in a while. Again, we were just getting really good looks. They probably weren’t maybe in the same rhythm or context of what we had in the first half, but we had post-ups, we had wide open 3s.

“Might have affected us a little bit. The guys knew what they were doing, we just kind of channeled through our man stuff anyway.”

The first-half offensive numbers? Despite making just 3 of 12 shots from the 3-point line, Gonzaga was converting at a high clip, making 19 of 35 shots from the field and 9 of 10 from the free-throw line to hit 50 points.

In the second, the Zags regressed in just about every offensive category, making 11 of 28 shots from the field, 0 of 9 from the 3-poine line and 7 of 12 from the free-throw line.

“They just changed the matchup, did a couple things different in the ball screen,” Gonzaga point guard Ryan Nembhard said. “But yeah, we missed some good looks from 3.”

Kentucky overcame adversity in another high-profile, neutral-site game, trailing 46-37 at halftime against sixth-ranked Duke at the Champions Classic.

The Wildcats made a series of second-half adjustments on the defensive end to outscore the Blue Devils 40-26 in a 77-72 victory.

“I think we talked about it at halftime, as much as you can game plan or prepare for these things, if you’re not going out there and playing tough and playing hard, it’s not going to work,” Kentucky’s Andrew Carr said. “… I feel like we’ve responded a lot this season.

“We have a point of emphasis that we talk about and we really go out there and make it happen.”